I know dogs probably aren't this smart or articulate, but...
Work with me, it's not that far-fetched.

Wolf inched back until his tail, tucked firmly between his hind legs, was smashed against something cool and metal. It was the back of the cage, and at the front of the cage, a pair of slender human paws was sliding a shrieking old gate into place. He heard a reluctant clink as the human paws slid something else into place, and when Wolf later pressed his nose to the gate, he found it impossible to open.

Wolf tried to stand up, and made it most of the way before his back collided with another cold metal surface. The cage wasn’t large enough for him to stand in, but on further inspection, he could at least turn around a fair amount. In one corner there was a scratched up silver bowl full of water. He sniffed at it, and it smelled stale. Wolf’s feet crunched on a stiff pink something that he thought might look somewhat familiar. Maybe not this one, but other ones back Home.

And Home, what had happened to Home? He wasn’t so sure. And what about Mom and Dad? He didn’t know, but he figured it wasn’t good. Something about this place with all its cold and metal and white walls outside his cage- it just didn’t feel right. The smells weren’t on target either. Home smelled like outside, and a little bit of inside. It never smelled sour like this place did. And it never smelled so strong.

At Home, Wolf could pick out everyone’s scent- Mom, Dad, all the other hounds, even the cat and anyone else who had visited lately. Everything at Home had its own smell. But this place? This place, everything smelled the same. Sure, he caught faint glimmers of scent, that of the other animals. He knew there must be other animals somewhere; he could almost hear them.

Almost, but not quite. All he could really hear was his own panting and shifting in the little metal cage. It was like there was nothing in the world except the cage now, and its mocking walls, sending his own breath back at him. No smell but that heavy, sour, not-right stink that was all over everything here.

And then someone shut off the lights, and Wolf was alone with the night, the smell, and his cage. And he couldn’t get out if he tried. Couldn’t even make heads or tails of the place. All he could do was put his head on his paws and wait. And that’s exactly what he did.

x x x

Wolf shook awake and growled as the gate was wrenched open. He backed into a corner of his cage, fur bristling, teeth bared. At first the human paws hesitated, but when wolf didn’t lash out, they quickly reached in and took the water bowl. A second or two later, the paws carefully replaced it with a new one, one whose contents didn’t smell so stale. Next to it they left another bowl, this one full of brown pellets that seemed pleasantly familiar.

Wolf relaxed his jaws and sniffed at the food. He picked a mouthful of kibbles out and retreated into the furthest corner of the cage to chomp them down. When one of the human paws started to flutter into the cage, Wolf’s tail wagged without his permission. The human paw reached toward him, and he licked it. It tasted a little sour, like the place smelled, but underneath it reminded him of Mom. It was almost soft, like hers had been, but tough, too. And to the seam of his tongue, it felt to be about the same size.

When the human paw was joined by a human face, however, Wolf knew it could not be Mom. The face was too smooth, too tan, and too small to be Mom. Instead of Mom’s straight hair that matched the salt-and-pepper grey of Wolf’s own coat, this person’s was curly and black. It was pushed into a sort of fluffy glob at the base of her neck. But the girl was baring her teeth, just like Mom would if Wolf had done something especially good.

He took this as a good sign, and inched forward a little in the cage. About then there was a lot of loud human noise somewhere that Wolf couldn’t see. He could feel the slight vibrations of feet, and in another instant the human with the curly hair disappeared, and another, larger paw slammed the cage door shut. It hung something over the front of the cage that made a horrible clackety sound which echoed throughout the metal walls.

Wolf waited for something else. For a blow or another sound or for the girl to come back. But none of these things happened, and after a minute or two even the footsteps were gone. Wolf lay his head back down, ears tucked against his scalp, and closed his eyes. Behind them were fuzzy pictures that he knew weren’t really there. He liked them just the same though, so that’s what he thought about instead of what was going on.

He saw Home. Home was a big square place with a lot of little square places inside it. On the inside it was always warm, and it always smelled fresh and good. There were a lot of soft places to lay, a lot of things to explore. He and his six brothers all lived there with Mom and Dad. Mom and Dad, he knew, weren’t the same as Momma and Poppa, but Momma and Poppa were barely there in his fuzzy memories.

He knew Momma and Poppa were more like him. They weren’t people. They weren’t so tall and hairless like Mom and Dad. Momma looked a lot like Wolf’s brothers. She had floppy ears and a tan coat that was shorter and softer than Wolf’s. Her belly had white on it, and her eyes were a soft brown, like those of his brothers. None of his siblings nor his Momma had the light eyes that Wolf saw whenever he looked into water. Wolf thought they might be what people called yellow, but he wasn’t really sure.

Anyway, the only other one who had them was Poppa. Poppa looked like a bigger stronger version of Wolf. He was bigger than Momma and bigger than all of Wolf’s brothers. His fur was even shaggier and darker, almost black around his face. His muzzle was longer, and slim, and his paws were big like Wolf’s. Poppa’s tail was heavy and swishy, and his eyes that matched Wolf’s were never tired.

Poppa had mostly lived outside, not sometimes like Wolf and Momma and his brothers, but all the time, like the horses. One day, Wolf remembered, Poppa wasn’t outside. And never, Wolf recalled, did he come back. It didn’t bother him much, not as much as when momma died. But even that wasn’t a big deal, because Wolf had been just a pup. He hardly remembered them besides what they looked like anyway.

Most of Wolf’s life had been spent with Mom and Dad, who, he figured out, were the ones who “owned” Wolf’s Home. He didn’t really know what that meant, but he thought it was about the same as how his brothers all took certain places in the yard, or claimed certain trees. The same way maybe that Wolf had always gotten to sleep at the foot of Mom and Dad’s bed, while his brothers had other spots.

Wolf’s tail started to slide back between his legs as he thought about Mom and Dad. He was thinking of how Mom was always up just as early as any, heating up pieces of pork or chicken or vegetables for her and Dad. How sometimes Wolf and his brothers got to eat the leftovers and how they were at least five trees better than kibbles. He was thinking about how outside, Home was an endless supply of hunts and adventures and grassy places to run through.

He was thinking how it didn’t look like Mom and Dad were going to come back, either.

About this time, the cage door opened once again, and when Wolf merely looked up at the human paws, they came in without hesitation. Something stiff and snug was shoved over his muzzle, and Wolf discovered that he could no longer open his mouth. After that a rope went around his neck, and the hands dragged him out of the cage. A tall human with particularly shiny shoes and a deep voice that didn’t make any sense walked Wolf through a narrow hallway where, he could see, all the other animals had been hiding.

There were dogs everywhere, all in little cages like Wolf’s. Some were big and calm like Momma had been, some looked lively like Wolf’s brothers. Others were small and funny-looking, and Wolf wondered if maybe they weren’t dogs at all. Between all of them were a few suspicious-looking cats, glaring down at him as if they knew what was going on. Somewhere up high there was another animal that didn’t smell like dog or cat, but more like the gophers Wolf had chased back Home in the fall.

Finally they reached the almost-end of the hallway, where the big human yanked off Wolf’s mouth-trapper and shoved him into a new cage. This one wasn’t solid like the other one, but made of thicker metal bars all the way around. He could stand up freely, and even walk a few paces in either direction. This cage had more stale water and more plain kibbles, and in one corner a mat that didn’t look all that soft at all. Wolf paced its length a few times, and then lay down.

Across the way there were two empty cages, one on top of the other. Beside them was an old black and white cat who looked at him for a second, licked her paw, and then yawned. A little out of sight Wolf could hear the humans mulling around, but nothing they were saying or doing made sense. He tucked his tail to his side, perked his ears forward, and waited.

x x x

This was the second time Wolf had woken up caged, and he wasn’t enjoying it any more now than he had two days ago. With nowhere to run and no one to play with, he merely lay on the mat and watched, and thought. His ankles and the spots where his legs connected to the rest of him were barking in pain. Wolf remembered only vaguely the pain, and also realized that the new humans must not know about it. When he had been with Mom and Dad, there had been some kind of crunchy thing that they had always given him. It didn’t taste good at all, but he noticed that since he’d come to the cage place, no such crunchy thing had been given. He shifted on his achy joints and wondered what this meant.

At some point during the day, the clackety thing tagged to the front of his cage got flipped around, and Wolf could see what it was. It was some kind of plate, or board or something, with a few pieces of paper clipped to it. Everything was in human, so he didn’t know what all the squiggles and lines meant. But while most of it was in black, there was another bit, bigger than the rest, in bright red. It looked like, Dangerous. Wolf wasn’t sure what Dangerous was supposed to mean, but he noticed that none of the other animals had any red scribbles around their cages.

Maybe this was why Wolf had been left all alone. And why they hadn’t given him any of the crunchy things. He remembered one time, back when he was barely out of pup-hood, that he and a couple of his brothers had torn up one of the sitting places at Home. They’d been put out all alone for the night, and hadn’t had anything to eat until morning. He figured this might be something like that. But what had he done wrong? Wolf had not torn up anything. He hadn’t even been barking or run off. Wolf was, for the most part, a Good Dog.

It all just didn’t seem right. It was like it had been right before they’d brought him to this place of cages. Things just weren’t how they should be. Like when he’d woken up and found Mom and Dad on the floor. Now, sometimes Mom and Dad might sit on the floor, but they never slept there. Wolf didn’t even sleep on the floor most of the time, and he knew for a fact that humans almost never did.

When he came padding up to them, tongue sloshing and tail flapping, he’d expected them to sit up. Or to mumble something he’d know how to react to, or to pet his head or scratch behind his ears. But neither did. They just lay there, and when Wolf got a little closer, he was hit with the smell. Immediately his ears had gone back and all the muscles in his body went rigid. All of a sudden he was torn. Half of him wanted to try and wake Mom and Dad up, because he knew they shouldn’t be laying there like that. The positions weren’t right, and Dad never slept with his legs all twisted up like that.

And the smell itself wasn’t right. The smell was like metal and like dinner before it was cooked. It was like a field mouse when you caught it and bit down. Like that, but more like a whole forest of field mice. It was horrible and wrong and infinitely bad, but it was making him hungry, too. And half of him thought it felt about to right to sink his teeth right into Mom or Dad. Half of him knew what the smell of blood meant- food.

That was probably the Bad Dog half, Wolf figured. But the Good Dog part knew that was wrong. You did not bite and eat and savor your Mom and Dad, you protected them and kept them safe. He took a tedious step closer and nosed Mom’s arm. She didn’t respond, but the arm slipped over to reveal red gouges all up her arm. When Wolf nosed her face, her head tilted back and something seeped down her neck: more red, more blood. Dad had the same thing going on, only his was down his face and chest.

Wolf whined, and nosed them each again. Neither got up, neither said anything. He laid his head on Mom’s chest, and she wasn’t warm like before. And she wasn’t even breathing, he didn’t think. He did the same for Dad, and there was nothing. Wolf whined again, then barked. Nothing, no one. And where were his brothers? They had to have gone somewhere. You couldn’t just hide six big old hounds. Something had definitely been extremely wrong.

And next thing Wolf knew, his head was back in a howl, a real howl. He couldn’t ever have remembered making a sound like that before. But he was, and it felt right. So he howled again. And after that, his stomach started to growl. In a second the growl came right up through his clenched teeth, big white and yellow daggers snapping together. And he caught the smell again, and he went for Mom’s throat.

Wolf was starting to think maybe that had been it. He knew it was wrong. More wrong than even tearing up the sitting places or marking territory in the house. He knew it wasn’t a Good Dog thing to do. But that smell… it had been too strong. And something in wolf had just gone without the rest of him. He was starting to really decide that mom and Dad weren’t ever coming back. And the lights went out again, and the humans left. And now it was just Wolf and the cage.

x x x

It had been three days since the men in the tan outfits had shown up at Home, busted down the front door, and dragged Wolf away. When they had come in, Wolf had been halfway through chewing apart Mom’s throat. Everything he saw was red, and everything he smelled was blood. He growled and snarled between snapping jaws and narrowed eyes. They dragged him out in a frenzy, and ever since it had been cages. It wasn’t til later, when he calmed down, that Wolf remembered what he had seen as the tan-suited men dragged him out of his Home.

But now that he could smell and see clearly, he knew it hadn’t always been there. It was a big metal, almost black bar, with a hook at each end. He’d seen it before, outside mostly, where Dad would need it sometimes to pry things open, or whatnot. It usually lived in the back of the machine. The machine was like a big cow with no rear end, just a flat bed of metal. It roared like thunder when Mom and Dad woke it up and took it to town. But when they dragged Wolf out, it wasn’t there either.

Now Wolf lay chewing at one of the nails of his back paw, wondering if the people knew about that, and thinking maybe it had something to do with Mom and Dad being so still and cold and, well, dead. Wolf knew about Dead. People didn’t think animals knew, but Wolf did. He knew about Dead. He didn’t exactly get what happened when you were dead, or why people seemed to worry so much about it. But he knew that when you were dead, you didn’t talk or breathe or play or anything. You got real cold, too, and lazy. He knew that once most people got dead, they’d stay dead for a good while. And once they were, somebody else would usually take them away.

Now he was starting to think that maybe dead was caused by Bad Dogs, or maybe even sometimes Bad Humans. He wasn’t really sure, but he thought maybe Mom and Dad weren’t supposed to be dead yet.

x x x

That last morning, the big cage across from Wolf’s wasn’t empty anymore. The humans put a big old mother dog and four pups in it. The mother was an almost blonde color, and most of her pups were either blondes or brunettes. There was one though, who was neither. She didn’t have long silky fur like her family, either. She was grey, and shaggy, and even though she couldn’t have been more than a week or so old, her little ears were already pointy, and her little paws were already bigger than those of her brothers. Her eyes were open, the only one of the bunch.

And her eyes? They were yellow. Wolf was sure of it. She blinked at him, and with great effort rolled her head over to peer at him curiously. And Wolf knew she was like him. He noticed that the cage she was in didn’t say Dangerous though. He figured she was probably a Good Dog, still. Not a bad one, like he must be.

A little while after the new family arrived, one of the humans came to Wolf’s cage, and opened it. He looked out with only mild interest, as he was finally getting used to these humans and their smell. But this time, there were no food or water bowls, not even a rope. It was the girl, the one with the black hair and the little hands, only this time she wasn’t smiling. She reached in and grabbed Wolf by the collar. Then she looked over the paper that said Dangerous, and walked him out of the cage.

She took him down a long corridor somewhere off to one side of where all the other animals were. Wolf walked slowly but didn’t resist. His ankles were really throbbing by now, and he knew they’d catch him anyway. Wolf may have outlived the rest of his family, but he was no spring pup anymore. He plodded along obediently beside the girl, and when she led him into a small bare room with a silver table, he didn’t run or even bark.

Soon a man in one of those white coats came out of a door at the opposite side of the room, and helped the girl lift Wolf onto the table. He whined a little at his joints, and at the icy chill of the steel. The girl pet his head, and the man looked at him with some soft sad emotion Wolf hadn’t seen since before Mom and Dad had gone dead. Then the girl held around his neck as the man jabbed something sly and stingy into Wolf’s leg, and everything started to hum.

It hurt just a little, like all his muscles were cramping up, but then everything was water, and even the achy pains in his joints were gone. The room started to swim, and for a minute everything was fuzzy, like the memories. He thought for a second that maybe the girl was Mom, and the man could be Dad. Then after that it wasn’t fuzzy but just black, and Wolf still didn’t whine or bark or growl. He howled, or he thought he did, and thought that maybe it was okay, and that he was good Dog after all.